Medea Today

I just had the pleasure and the pain of experiencing a Greek drama--the tragedy known as Medea. This ancient story is of a deep, profound love that produced two beautiful children; but alas, the man betrayed the woman and married someone else. In her anger, she murders the man's new bride, the bride's father, and then her own children. Her hatred and her selfishness grew greater than her love for her children. Her desire for revenge overruled her compassion. In the end, she could not love with as much passion as she could hate, and her hatred infested her soul, seeping out of her pores in a wicked display of contentiousness and unbridled evil.

The hurt in her heart tortured her veins with pain and manifested itself in a hate so engrossing and so complete as to destroy any and all humanity that resided within her. She was captive to her own self execration and malediction. Although there were moments of hope of forgiveness and tenderness particularly as regards her own children, she did not allow those emotions to govern her actions, instead she squelched the good and exacerbated the negative which in turn transformed her into a hate monger with desire to inflict pain on those around her. She acquired a mental disease that infested her.

How often do we allow this to happen? Are we ruled by hatred or by love? What can we do to end the hatred in ourselves and others and replace it with love and gentleness? What are the causes of abhorrence, self-loathing, and violence? Is it possible to end the hate and emphasize the love individually and collectively?

When Medea murdered her children in order to exact revenge upon her scandalous husband she murdered a major portion of herself. When we hate, we are destroying our own soul and we decide whether to love or to hate, to forgive or to seek revenge, to eradicate circumspection, or to practice apostasy. Medea teetered on the brink of insanity, and historically may have crossed the line earlier, but in her lucidity and compassion she nearly conquered her hatred:

And you will nevermore your mother see,

Nor live as ye have done beneath her eye.

Alas, my sons, why do you gaze on me,

Why smile upon your mother that last smile?

Ah me! What shall I do? My purpose melts

Beneath the bright looks of my little ones.

I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve,

I will bear off my children from this land.Why

should I seek to wring their father's heart,

When that same act will doubly wring my own?

I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve.

Yet, in the end she was unable to keep her self-respect and her dignity by avoiding the ultimate destruction of herself and the ones she loved. She uncontrollably resolved to extinguish all love and in a sense all humanity.

Fortunately, Medea does not represent "Everyman" but she does represent the potential for evil that may lie within us. While she may have relinquished her hold on her powerful evil emotions, we do not have to do so. We, the collective we, do not have to fall into barbarism and selfishness. "Moral action is never automatic; it presupposes intention, free choice. And intention inevitably either begins or must pass through the mind."--Jacob Needleman in Why Can't We Be Good. We can choose to be evil or choose to be good.

It is the preponderance of love in our hearts that prevents the events of Medea. Perhaps God's greatest gift is love. As God loves us, so also should we love others, applying love unequivocally and unconditionally. Art, theater, visual, or music, can teach, train, and guide our behavior both positively and negatively, but in the case of Medea, we learn how not to act and how not to resign ourselves to evil. We gain from the mistakes of others. I hope we apply the lessons well.